Lindgren's Legend, Part II

This is the second of a two-part interview with American running legend Gerry Lindgren. The first part was posted on March 11.

RT: During your record-setting high school career, you had your sights set on continuing your development under Bill Bowerman at Oregon, but you wound up at Washington State. Tell us how that happened.

RT: But with 11 NCAA titles, things obviously worked out well for you at Washington State.

RT: Which races do you remember the most from your college career?

RT: A lot of people make a big deal out of the fact that you’re one of only two runners to beat Pre in an NCAA race when you won the 1969 NCAA cross country title, followed by Mike Ryan of Air Force and Pre. Yet you only lost one NCAA race — to Jim Ryun in the 2-mile at the 1968 indoor championships.

RT: That was the only season you raced Pre in college. You gained a bit of notoriety for wearing a "Stop Pre" T-shirt in 1972. Do you have any stories about him?

GL: "I got Prefontaine inspired about running. One summer when I was in college and visiting friends in Reedsport, Ore., about 15 miles up the coast from Coos Bay. There was a regional softball team that met at Coos Bay, and the people I was visiting had a son who had made the team, but Pre had been cut from the team. He was despondent and angry about it, so this kid asked me to go down and see if I could cheer up Pre, because he knew who I was. So I ran down to Coos Bay and knocked on his door. Pre opened the door and said 'I know you, you’re Gerry Lindgren.' Then he came outside and said, 'My God, you’re smaller than I am. I’m bigger than you, you’re just a wimp.' I don’t think I said a single word to Pre. He did all of the talking. He said, 'I’m going to kick your ass. I’m going to beat you. You’re just a wimp.' So I turned around and starting running back up the highway. Pre said later that he went and put on his shoes and chased me up the highway but couldn’t catch me. I don’t know if that’s true or not because I never looked back. I think that was 1966 or 1967 and that’s how Pre started his running career.”

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RT: You were in the middle of the war between the AAU and the NCAA. Tell us about that.

GL: “It had been going on for about 50 years before I got there, and both sides used the athletes as pawns in the war. One side would tell the athletes they couldn’t’ run in a meet and the other side would tell the athletes they couldn’t run in the other side’s events. It was messing up people’s careers and lives, but nobody cared about the athletes. In 1965, the NCAA pulled a boycott of the AAU championships when I was a freshman in college. I wasn’t eligible to run as a varsity runner because back then freshman couldn’t compete in the NCAA ... but they could still run in the AAU races. I didn’t even know there was a war or a boycott, until I was coming back on an airplane and two guys from a newspaper asked me if I was running in the upcoming AAU meet and I said ‘Yeah, of course.’ I got home and the headlines in the newspaper were that ‘Lindgren defies NCAA ban.’ And I thought, ‘What ban?’ I had no idea what was going on.”

RT: Still, history says you stood up to the NCAA. How did it get resolved?

GT: “My coach called me and told me I was just a puppy dog for the AAU and that I was doing what they wanted me to do and I was going to lose my right to go to college if I didn’t stop this. And then he hung up and the athletic director from Washington State called me and threatened me in no uncertain terms and said I would never compete in college again if I didn’t recant, and then a famous coach from the University of Kentucky called to me that I was a pig. Nobody had told me about the ban, they were all just intimidating the devil out of me. I had two weeks before the AAU race, and in those two weeks I was called repeatedly. I heard a knock on the door one night and some guy was standing there with a can of gas, and he was an NCAA guy and he said if I ran in the AAU meet, he’d burn down my house with me in it. It was terrible. A couple of days before the meet, a guy called me and said he was in San Diego and he’d be in the stands with a gun and that if I tried to run, he’d shoot me dead. That’s how bad it got. They were terribly violent with each other. Bill Bowerman called me and said I was just being used, but I said ‘What’s it all about?’ I hadn’t even heard about it. And he couldn’t tell me why they were fighting or what the war was about."

RT: But you ran in the AAU meet anyway and wound up running quite a 6-mile race against Billy Mills, right?

GL: “Yes, that’s right, but the Monday before the meet, I had stepped in a hole and sprained my ankle. I couldn’t even walk on it. So I couldn’t run. The newspaper got wind of it and said, ‘Lindgren recants, he’s not running.’ I was on crutches and I hobbled onto the plane and hobbled on crutches all the way down to San Diego. I was supposed to run the 3-mile race, but I skipped it because my foot hurt too much. I was hoping I would feel better two hours later when we ran the 6-mile. Before the race, Billy came up and said ‘let’s work together, I’ll help you.’ So we decided to work together for the first 5 miles. I figured if I got out away from everybody else, maybe at least I would stand out. I knew that if I ran poorly, nobody would care and the NCAA could do whatever they wanted with me after they had threatened so many different things. So I knew I had to run a good race and wondered how I could do that with my foot the way it was. But when the gun went off, three steps later there was no pain at all. It was just completely gone and Billy and I went on to tie for a new world record [27:11.6]. It’s unbelievable how you cure yourself when you have to be there. It was quite a moment in my career. That was one of my most memorable races.”

RT: You made the Olympic team after your senior year in high school in 1964, but you never made another Olympic team.

GL: “In 1968, I had hurt my Achilles in the NCAA 10,000m race and it was still bugging me. The AAU said I would have to run another race in Los Angeles to make the Olympic trials. I ran a 10K on the track in the L.A. Coliseum but with my Achilles had not responded to treatment and had to drop out at the 5-mile mark. Then I ran the trials at Echo Summit in California, but I was fifth in the 10,000m and fourth in the 5,000m and didn’t make the team. That was disappointing, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.”

RT: You finished fourth in the AAU 3-mile race and were still training in 1972. What happened that year?

GL: “Not long before the trials, I was doing sprints on the side streets where I lived and some kid came out of an alley in a car. He was going very fast, doing ‘suicides,’ going into the streets without looking and he hit me. I messed up my leg and could hardly walk. I ran the trials but it bothered me too much and didn’t make the team.”

RT: You were one of the guys who decided to go pro in the early 1970s, right?

GL: “I went pro in order to help track, because something had to be done about the AAU’s control of the money. They did so many things that put the athletes in a bad place. You couldn’t hold down a job and run and you couldn’t run and make money or get anything for it. Their idea of amateurism was a lot different than we know it now. So I went with this pro circuit called the International Track Association. It only lasted about three years, but in those three years the AAU governing body became very lenient about prize money and travel money and did a lot of things so that the athletes wouldn’t join the pro circuit. But by then I was declared a professional runner, which meant I couldn’t run in the amateur meets for a while. That was probably the end of my career at that point.”

RT: You ran the Trail’s End Marathon in Seaside, Ore., a couple of times. Had you given thought to running the 1972 Olympic trials marathon?

GL: “I never really trained for a marathon. They kept asking me to go run Boston when I was in college and I always turned it down because I had other things to do. Near the end of my college life, they got me to run the Trail’s End Marathon in 1970. I didn’t want to but I did. I was surprised how slow everybody was running in a race. So I was way out ahead and got the halfway mark behind the lead vehicle and they were broadcasting on the local radio station. They couldn’t believe I was under 2-hour pace and a mile ahead. I got to 22 miles and I was still under 2-hour pace and in the last four miles, I kind of fell apart and wound up at about 2:26. In the last mile, everybody ran by me and said, 'Welcome to the marathon,' and I wound up fifth. I ran a couple other marathons but I never ran faster than that. I had another effort that might have been better, but I passed out just before I got to the finish line and didn’t finish.” [Note: The Trail’s End Marathon went defunct after its 31st running in 2000, but the still-active Web site lists Lindgren as finishing fifth in 1972 with a 2:27:47.]

RT: You’ve done some coaching since you’ve been in Hawaii, including serving as an assistant to the women’s distance program at the University of Hawaii for a while. Are you coaching anyone now?

GL: “The job at Hawaii was nice. I liked that a lot and was doing well. Everyone was running their best within a year of the time I started. But I think the head coach was worried that I would take her job so she fired me and threw me out. I do a little bit of coaching by email with kids that contact me and ask for help with their workouts. And some people have been trying to get me to start a club again, so maybe I’ll start a club. I like coaching. I like helping people improve.”

RT: Any chance you’ll get back into masters racing once you get healthy?

GL: “I’ve done a little bit of masters racing. I haven’t been in good enough shape to race because I get so many injuries like this dumb elbow and shoulder injury that I have. But I was thinking that maybe I’d like to start racing again and do some masters racing. I’m really slow now though. The older I get, the slower everybody else is going, so maybe I can catch a few.”

RT: What kind of advice would you give young distance runners today?

GL: “When I beat Pre at the NCAA cross country meet in 1969, we came through the mile at 4:06/4:07/4:08, and you just don’t run that fast in a 6-mile race. It scared everybody, but I was ready for that so it didn’t scare me. The stopwatch became my best friend, and that’s how I made everybody run a good race. Pre had beat me at the Pac 8 conference meet by a nose, so at the NCAA meet [Lindgren’s last collegiate race] I was going to do everything I could to beat him. It was a good race, but that time I beat him. And that’s why I tell everybody to stop running to win and instead run to inspire. Run to make everybody run a good race.”

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